To not yet have had the pleasure of having your eardrums sandblasted by The Amenta is to have missed out on possibly Australia's finest exponents of extreme, and in a scene that includes the likes of Psycroptic and Alchemist that's saying something. One listen to either of the Sydney-based outfits two previous offerings should be more than enough to help justify the hype though. If those have passed you by then you may want to consider adding VO1D to your list of essential purchases.

Not so much a retrospective as a re-imagining of sorts, VO1D criss-crosses both old and new material, the catch being that the former has been re-recorded and in some cases completely re-arranged. Whether to bring their back catalogue into line with what they'd originally envisioned for the band or simply to show off their revamped line-up, it's an exercise that hits the target - mostly. For one thing, the group's industrial influences are now far more pronounced, not only in the mechanical ambiance of the soundscapes that are a frequent interstitial but on the songs themselves. Notably beefed up is "Erebus", the crown jewel in their 2004 debut OCCASUS and even "Junky" off the more recent nOn sounds markedly fleshed out.

Sadly, other cuts don't fare quite as strongly. "Nihil", another of OCCASUS' finest moments, sounds positively impotent, stripped as it is of the atmosphere it oozed in its first incarnation and with Cain Cressall's voice sounding buried in the surprisingly muddy production. I could probably go without the remixes tacked on at the end of the disc as well. But truth be told, with so much material crammed on here already, there's more than enough quality on offer to render most criticism completely moot.